TSG39. The Art of Packing with Nino van Vuuren part 1

the mini and the basic art kits

Dear Sketchbookers, 

Today I have a special treat for all of us. I invited

Nino van Vuuren

to share her different ways of packing art supplies for urban sketching with us.

A bit about Nino:

Nino van Vuuren is an artist and teacher with a love for observational drawing/sketching. She joined her first Urban Sketchers meetup in 2017 and has been enjoying meeting up with groups of sketchers on a regular basis ever since. She also enjoys sketching on her own be it at home, the city, a park, or while on holiday. In her newsletter/blog Sketch. Explore. Create! she shares thoughts, ideas, and a peek into her creative practice with the aim of inspiring and encouraging others on their own creative journeys.

On 13 July 2024 she will be teaching an online workshop called Speed Sketching with Watercolour Pencils. Go to this link for more information and to sign up.

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We thought the best way to talk about art kits for urban sketching would be to compare what we would use on different occasions. Part 1 out of these 2 posts would consist of which art supplies make it into our kits when we have to pack lightly. Part 2, which will be shared by Nino next week, will consist of all of the supplies we can bring even if that hurts our backs (just a bit!). Here is what Nino shared with us:

“The size of my sketching kit depends largely on two factors:

1. How much time I know I will have to sketch. This varies from anything from five minutes during a quick walk to two hours during a urban sketching meetup with other sketchers.

2. How much space I have in my bag for sketching gear.

Here is a breakdown of my different sketching kits from the smallest mini kit to my pushing it to the extremes big kit:

Mini kit:

My smallest kit is a small sketchbook from Hahnemuhle and a black marker from Kuretake. It’s small enough to fit into my jacket or pants pocket and I especially use it when I go for walks in winter. I know I will have a maximum of 5 minutes before my fingers start to freeze so I need to be able to make a super quick sketch.

Something I drew with this kit:

A quick sketch made one morning during a walk

Basic kit:

This is the kit that I carry around with me most of the time. It fits comfortably into my everyday handbag along with all the other things that I carry around with me when I leave the house. I use this kit for sketches that would take me between 15 and 40 minutes.

In this kit I have:

• A5 Stillman & Birn Epsilon sketchbook

• A small watercolour palette that can hold 13 different colours.

• My small tin of favourite Neocolor II watersoluble wax pastels

• Collapsible water holder

• Da Vinci Casaneo dagger travel brush

• Waterbrush (this one is from Sakura, but I sometimes use the ones from Faber-Castell)

• Sailor Fude nib fountain pen with blue grey ink from de Atramentis

• Kuretake brush pen filled with black ink

• Uni sign pen

• Soft Black Pitt Oil Base pencil from Faber-Castell

• 3 to 5 Derwent Inktense pencils of various colours

• Pencil sharpner

• Binder clips

• Piece of kitchen towel

Except for the sketchbook and waterholder, all of this fits into my self made pencil case.

A sketch I made with this kit:

A fun and colourful forest scene made using mostly watercolour and neocolor II crayons.

Don’t you love the colors and the textures? I am crazy about this last scene!

Now, my part:

Mini Kit

I would say this mini kit should only consist of a small sketchbook, like this one from Royal talens, and one ink pen. Unfortunately, I realized that I cannot, for the life of it, bring only that. In case I have to pack extra light, I chose also a sketch pencil. The pencil and the ink pen were actually chosen in one of the art supply showdowns I made, that I still haven't posted (sorry!), but they are coming soon (promise!), just because they have changed the way I work now. 

Basic kit

Between failing to make decisions assertively and not knowing what I could use outside, making this basic toolkit took me at least 4 hours. This was an effort I made because I wanted to meet my new sketching buddy

Lisa Burda

some weeks ago. We were planning to go to a museum and paint outside afterward. I have to say, this sketchbook kit is my favorite so far. It contains pink, green, yellow and brown. All of them in light and dark shades. I have a super thin muji sketchbook (but this can change anytime!) and just a couple of things more, a sharpener and a clip, because you don't know when you need it.

In this basic kit I have 2 Jaxon watercolor crayons; pencils: 2 Luminance, 1 museum, and one Prismacolor; and 2 markers, one of them is a Karin decobrush and the other is an Albrecht Dürer watercolor marker. I chose these because of the colors and the textures I can make with them.

To show you what I made with these toolkits, I made a small sketchbook tour.

I hope you enjoyed this and I can´t wait for you to see our next issue in Nino´s newsletter.

Until next week friends,

Citla and Nino